Richard MacManus

What does it mean to be a developer in 2021? If you use a no-code tool and build an app entirely by drag and drop, does that make you a developer? What if you “remix” (i.e. copy) an existing web app on Glitch and change a few bits of code in it — does that … Read more

I first came across the application programming interface (API) directory, ProgrammableWeb, in September 2005, shortly after it was launched by John Musser. At the time, the directory had just 54 listings. How times have changed, because nearly 16 years later ProgrammableWeb lists over 24,000 APIs. It’s an indication of how pervasive APIs have become on … Read more

Jamstack is a modern web development concept invented by Netlify, a company that offers CI/CD and deployment services for the web. Typically, a Jamstack approach calls for pre-rendering as much of a website’s content as possible and delivering it via a Content Delivery Network (CDN). Dynamic functionality can be added to the mix via the … Read more

GraphQL, a query language for APIs and a server-side runtime for executing those queries, has become one of the most popular ways for web applications to fetch data. It’s increasingly a go-to solution for Single-Page Applications (SPAs), serverless offerings, Jamstack frameworks, and other modern applications. Most importantly, it’s become the technology of choice for building … Read more

Web development in 2021 is so dominated by JavaScript and its many frontend frameworks, it’s sometimes easy to forget that the traditional server-side web application architecture is not only alive and well — but thriving. 55.3% of Django developers who took the annual StackOverflow survey said they will continue to use it; and 49.3% said … Read more

Earlier this month, Google announced Flutter 2, the latest version of its UI toolkit for building “natively compiled applications for mobile, web, and desktop from a single codebase.” Flutter allows developers to create native apps for five operating systems — iOS, Android, Windows, macOS and Linux — as well as a web app for modern … Read more

Instagram Lite, a version of the Instagram app that weighs only 2MB — compared to 30MB for the full iOS and Android apps — was relaunched on Android earlier this month. Curiously, Instagram decided to ditch the previous Progressive Web App (PWA) version of Instagram Lite and re-build it as an Android app using an … Read more

Just over a year ago, Microsoft debuted a new web browser that was designed to replace its long-running — and often controversial — Internet Explorer product. Called Microsoft Edge, the new browser is notable for being based on Google’s open source browser engine Chromium. But despite abandoning most of its proprietary browser software, Microsoft is … Read more

What React is to JavaScript user interface components, LitElement and lit-html are to web components. Well, in the sense that they’re both libraries that help developers build and deploy components for websites and web applications. But there are some key differences between the two sets of technologies; along with questions about interoperability. LitElement and lit-html … Read more

Web Components is an emerging web standard that allows developers to create reusable custom elements for their web pages and apps. Having only recently gained support in the leading browsers, the usage of web components isn’t as well documented as (for example) React components — which have received a lot of attention in recent years. … Read more

Web development in 2021 is dominated by frameworks — JavaScript frameworks like Next.js and Angular, CSS frameworks like Tailwind and Materialize, JAMstack frameworks like Next.js and Gatsby, and many others. But one new company, Yax.com, is advocating for a “no-framework” web standards approach to web development. Upon closer inspection, it offers a refreshing “back to … Read more

Ruby on Rails creator David Heinemeier Hansson recently spoke at a virtual meetup of the Chicago Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). Hansson, who has been at the forefront of web development for the past 15 years, talked about the state of JavaScript frameworks today, frontend development trends he’s tracking, and a new framework he helped … Read more

Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) became a trending social media term last week, for all the wrong reasons. When the right-wing microblogging app, Parler, was pulled from the Google and Apple app stores, its users immediately began to search for a browser-based version. Some of them searched specifically for a PWA version, which led to this … Read more

Adobe Flash, the once hugely popular multimedia software platform, was discontinued at the end of 2020 — to a mostly positive reaction across social media and the developer ecosystem. Even though many of us look back fondly at the visual creativity unleashed by Flash in the 1990s, it was clear from the early 2000s that … Read more